


Equivalent Exchange

by llwydion



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (but not literally she's not going to transform into a goddess she's just really really good), (temporarily) misgendered Pidge, Allura is a badass goddess, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, FMA AU, M/M, lance please you're a mess, pidge is done let them rest, pidge uses they/them, the broganes did the very thing they were told not to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 02:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16714696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llwydion/pseuds/llwydion
Summary: When Lance, Hunk, and Pidge stumble across the legendary Flame Alchemist fighting his way through the nearest Galra camp on the other side of the Arusian-Galran wall, they are drawn into a plot that runs more deep than they could have imagined.(alternate titles include: love in wartime when one of you is bi and proud and the other one is an emo gay, a Klance fic; Major-General Allura Altea could kick my ass any day and I'd let her - every fangirl/boy/person ever; i saw a deviantart image (linked in notes) and fell in love with it - the author)





	Equivalent Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Voltron Legendary Defender x FMA Brotherhood](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/434950) by SolKorra. 



> Heavily inspired by this image: https://www.deviantart.com/solkorra/art/Voltron-Legendary-Defender-x-FMA-Brotherhood-686832287
> 
> Also I am a sucker for all things FMA, because it was one of my favorite mangas/animes ever (FMA and FMAB were both good, just different, but good.)

When Lance is six, his parents bring the family to Central City just in time to see the State Alchemists parade through the streets, proud and strong. He looks up at the blue-clad men and women, who walk with confidence in their steps and power ingrained into their very beings, and he sees the woman up front. She has pretty white hair and dark skin and looks only a few years older than him. She has pink tattoos under her blue, blue eyes, and she sees him staring and waves and smiles at him. He stares back with stars in his eyes, and vows that one day, he will be up there with her. With them, as a proud fighter for his country.

The minute he gets home, he is rushing over to his friend Hunk’s house. They’re neighbors, and Hunk is also six and much cooler than Veronica, who is eight and thinks she knows everything, and Marco, who is nine and likes to fight him for the last dessert (usually Marco wins, but that’s because he’s three whole years older, which is unfair).

He begs and begs his parents, and finally when he is fourteen, they agree to send him to a local alchemist’s house for lessons. One hour every week, for three glorious years, he learns how to freeze water and meld ice to his command, and he loves every minute of it. His teacher calls him “the most talented and inquisitive student I’ve ever had to teach”, but also “a pain in the butt when he gets started on his never-ending questions”.

His teacher is forcibly enlisted in the army when he is seventeen. Arus is at war with the Galra Empire, and every able-bodied alchemist is being forced into the army, whether they want to or not. The Galrans are known for their strength in close combat, and each of their Druids (commonly thought of as the Galran version of alchemists), though few in number, are good enough to take out whole battalions of common rank-and-file soldiers. Thus, the need for every alchemist to sign up and defend their home and country, and so his teacher takes up the mantle of State Alchemist and becomes known as the Freezing Alchemist. She ruffles his hair when she leaves and tells him to not be a pain in the butt to everyone else around him, alright?

He signs up for the Garrison, because where else will he go to become the alchemist he’s always wanted to be? After seeing what his teacher taught him, after the sheer power and finesse she’s shown him, how can he stop? So he takes the exam (and so does Hunk - he’s aiming to become an engineer, and where better than in the middle of the capital during wartime? The most cutting-edge technology and the most brilliant minds, all gathered in one area of a few square miles), and lo and behold he is accepted. Just barely, but he’s in, and that’s all that matters. Just like his new idol, Takashi Shirogane, who is twenty but already widely hailed as a genius of their generation. There are also rumors of his younger brother, who’s apparently more skilled than he is, and already out on the front lines fighting against the Galran combatants. A State Alchemist, at the tender age of seventeen. They’re only rumors, though, and Lance feels like he would have remembered a name such as Keith Kogane - if only for the sheer main-character-ness of it. It even had the alliteration and everything. Plus, none of them quite match up to his idol - Alchemist Allura Altea, the woman from the parade years ago who smiled at him and waved and had sheer, unadulterated power woven into every fiber of her being.

And then, one night, he hears Pidge, their communications expert, sneaking out of their shared room. Hunk’s heard too, judging by the twitching he hears below him - he’s never been a loud sleeper, and movement usually means he’s not asleep.

“Hey, Hunk?”

“Yea?”

“Wanna follow him?”

“Lance, you know how bad of an idea that is. No sneaking around after dark was like, the first rule we learned, because you could get suspended, or worse, expelled.”

“Yea, so we gotta tell him! And maybe figure out what he’s doing so late at night.”

“Nope, you go. I’m going back to sleep. Not risking my neck tonight. Good night.”

Lance waits, because he knows his childhood friend inside and out. Just as he hits a count of twenty, Hunk groans and rolls over.

“Fine, let’s go.”

* * *

 

When they finally make it out onto the tower on the wall (after hiding behind a large curtain when Commander Iverson walks by), Pidge is typing away furiously at some glowing console, deep in his own little world.

Lance walks up and blows air at his ear. He screams and jumps before turning angrily on Lance.

“What the hell?”

“Shh,” Hunk says from the safety of the doorway. “We need to be quiet! It’s after lights-out!”

“Wha’cha working on, Gunderson?”

Pidge shrugs. “Go away, McClain.”

“Yeesh, sorry, no need to get so heated up. What’s these glowy dots on the screen?”

Pidge glares at the hand as it pokes the dot and quickly slaps it away.

“They’re Galran troops. Battalions, to be exact. They’re from the camp just over the wall.”

By this time Hunk has wandered over to join them. “Do you mean you’re tracking Galran troop movement? Live?”

“Yea, I know, pretty impressive huh.”

“Dude, that is the  _ coolest _ . I don’t think some of our instructors can pull this off, especially not the communications prof! How’d you do it?”

“Well, I just rigged up a standard commlink, set up the right phase modulation as an intermediate step to obtaining the right frequency modulation to tap into Galra communications, synthesized -”

“But why?” Lance interrupts. All of the engineering mumbo-jumbo is as good as lost on him. He’s an alchemist, he knows chemistry and biology and that’s it, and though he loves it when his friends go into full geek mode, sometimes they lose themselves for hours. And they don’t have hours.

Pidge looks down. “I - can’t say. Not really, and not for now, at least.”

Lance squints, suspiciously. “Pidge, my dude, my man, we’ve been a team for how many months? And you’re saying you can’t tell us things? I told you about the time my mother decided it was a good idea for me to learn how to speak proper English, so she left me in a room with my big brother Luis and the TV set only to the  _ Teletubbies _ show. I still get flashbacks everytime my niece decides to sing that theme song.”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic, it’s just - wait. There’s something big happening. Some prisoner’s escaped? Over there.”

Pidge gestures vaguely northward, and indeed, there’s a little flare of bright light a few miles distant, where the nearest Galra camp is. It’s on the other side of the wall, but it’s clear something big is going on - there’s faint shouts and screams, and constant little flareups of light.

“There’s a name, being constantly repeated. Apparently the prisoner is - Shiro? Our Takashi Shirogane? And they’re fighting the Flame Alchemist, who’s on his own?”

“Wait, the Flame Alchemist’s there? As in, the guy the military brass can never quite control?”

The Flame Alchemist is notorious not only amongst Garrison students and staff but also amongst the Central City newspapers. The tabloids love any news of their darling troublemaker, who gets punted between commanders like a football because of his recklessness and hotheadedness. They still don’t have a name, because Major-General Allura Altea is notoriously close-fisted with the deck of cards she plays, but they know from the parts of the reports that are publicized that he’s a powerful but uncontrollable force.

“Well, let’s go check it out!”

“Wait, Lance, that sounds like a terrible idea -”

But Lance was already jumping over the wall, forming an ice slide beneath him as he falls. Hunk sighed and jumped after him, and Pidge, after a moment’s hesitation, followed.

What greeted them as they arrived at the camp was a scene of absolute chaos. There were panicked shouts from within tents that had caught on fire, the sound of many footsteps hurrying every which way, and blood-curdling screams from fiery conflagrations.

“So this is what the famous Flame Alchemist does… It’s horrible.”

“Yeah. Shiro should be over that way,” Pidge said, pointing towards a mass of less-burned tents.

“How’d you know?” Hunk asks. It’s the only way he can keep his mind off the smell of burning flesh.

Pidge taps the side of his head. “Commlink.”

Up ahead, Lance spots what looks like a familiar head of hair, being carried along on another’s shoulder. The figure carrying Shiro is smaller and slighter than him, but moves with the ease of someone much older - or much more used to the battlefield. Possibly the Flame Alchemist?

Before Hunk or Pidge can warn him, Lance decides to run over to the two. Upon hearing his footsteps, the smaller figure turns and snaps. The flame it produces lights up the night, and it’s immediately obvious this flame was meant to kill, if not for the ice wall that went up just in the nick of time.

“Wait, we’re here to help! We’re from the Garrison!”

The Flame Alchemist looks at them with disdain in his dark eyes. “Since when did the Garrison care about one of its own?”

“We’re students too, and the Galra are coming this way, we need to move now,” Pidge says.

“Where are we going?”

“My bike’s over this way, hurry up.”

The three of them look at each other. Hunk shrugs, Pidge nods, and Lance leads the way as they follow after the Flame Alchemist and Shiro. Behind them, the shouting grows louder as the Galra presumably discover their missing POW, and they pick up the pace.

After a quick chase and the flashing of a watch to the guards at the gate, they are quickly whisked away to somewhere in the base. Lance, Hunk, and Pidge, at least, have never been this far in before, and as the familiar white-and-grey regulation hallways of the Garrison are replaced by deep red wallpaper and plush carpeting, Lance starts to wonder exactly where they’re going.

Hunk apparently has the same idea and no hesitation to ask their cloaked leader. “Where are we going? Where is this?”

The Flame Alchemist turns to them, and in the light they realize he’s younger than they thought - not much older than themselves, his face yet unlined with age and streaked with soot. His eyes, Lance absently notes, weren’t the dark brown he thought they were, back in the Galra camp; they’re a deep violet, like the color of the night sky as twilight falls. They’re pretty eyes, but also weirdly familiar.

“We’re here,” the Flame Alchemist says as they stop in front of a pair of large wooden doors.

“And where’s here? Hunk asked like two minutes ago, but you just kept walking.”

“My superior’s office.”

Talking to this man is like squeezing toothpaste out of a nearly-empty tube, Lance thinks irritatedly. No matter how physically attractive he is, there’s no point if all that comes out when he opens his mouth are short responses that are as to-the-point as they can be.

“And who’s that?”

“Major-General Altea.”

“Yeah, yeah, some general in the army - wait. Did you just say Altea? As in Major-General Allura Altea?” When the alchemist doesn’t respond, he turns to Hunk. “Did he just say Altea? Am I dreaming right now?”

Hunk nods. “Yep, he said Altea.”

Any further fanboying on either Hunk’s or Lance’s part gets quickly put to an end by the alchemist knocking on the door.

“Come in,” a voice says from inside.

The Flame Alchemist pushes open the door and strides on in like he belongs there, which, in hindsight, he does. Somehow, it rubs at Lance.

“Ah, Flame, it’s you. I was wondering when you’d show up with him.”

“Hey Coran. Yeah, mission successful. Is the General in?”

“Yep. And who are these brave young people?”

The hooded face turns to them, and Lance swears he hears a quiet “tch”.

“Some Garrison kids. They decided that crashing the rescue mission was a good idea.”

“Hey, we’re not just some nobodies! The name’s Lance, Lance McClain. I’m the soon-to-be Frigorific Alchemist! And this is Hunk Garrett, engineer extraordinaire, and -”

“Pidge Gunderson, ma’am. We’re students at the Garrison who got caught up in this.”

The Flame Alchemist flinches, just a bit. Lance notices it only because he’s watching him, and he files it away for further pondering later.

“Nice to meet you, Gunderson, Garrett, McClain, and thank you for your help. We ask that nothing you’ve seen tonight gets discussed outside of these walls.”

“Wait what? Why?”

The Flame Alchemist lowers his hood, finally, and turns to face them. His face is handsome, all dark hair and pale skin, flawless cheekbones and sooty eyebrows. He’s also much younger than Lance had originally imagined - he looks no more than a few years older than them, if at that.

“Because you all are idiots, that’s what.”

“Hey! Watch it, just because you’re a State Alchemist -”

“What Keith meant to say is that before you leave tonight, Coran will have you all sign this non-disclosure agreement. We can’t have what happened tonight be broadcast to the public. Understand?” Major-General Altea asks, with a smile on her face. It’s the scariest one Lance has ever seen, and that includes the one his mother gave him that time he broke her favorite vase.

They all nod, and five minutes later they are back in their Garrison-sanctioned corridors with a secret in their heads, yet more questions on their tongues, and, in Lance’s case, Major-General Altea’s autograph on a single piece of foolscap.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: "frigorific" means causing or producing cold. Lance, my child, you need a better naming sense.


End file.
